Award-winning Digital Forensic Investigation Unit breaks new ground relating to child sexual abuse images

As the only force successful in this digital forensics pilot, GMP has approved further funding for the technology and IT infrastructure, allowing it to be rolled out for everyday use.

The Home Office initiative - the National CSE Automation Project - selected three forces to run a different element of automation, with GMP picked to perform API Automation, involving automation software being run on computers through the use of code.

The aim of the project was to streamline operations, test innovative techniques and harness automation technologies and subsequently improve productivity. The aim is to achieve justice quicker, improve conviction rates and increase public trust.

The DFIU team’s pilot successfully processed data 50 per cent faster and without the need of human intervention, meaning when receiving mobile phones or computers relating to child sexual abuse or child exploitation investigations that deleted data is retrieved before analysing pictures and videos.

Working with Magnet Forensics, which helped develop the software, the team which received an award for team innovation and won a Chief Commendation award from Chief Constable Stephen Watson, credits Magnet Forensics for a pivotal role in being the only successful pilot within the initiative.

Involvement in the pilot came about due to a backlog of cases. In 2019 the DFIU team recognised an increase in demand in relation to CSE and child image abuse cases. An increase in data sizes resulted in a longer process from case submission to achieving the end result.

Digital Forensic Investigation Unit manager, Ryan Moulson, welcomed the pilot and credits the hard work of every member of his team to its success. The team include Digital Forensic Investigators Lucy Carey-Shields, Dean Southworth and David (Jason) McKeown, and Digital Forensic Quality and Development Coordinator, Christopher Whiteley.

Ryan said: "The data that we see when reviewing mobile phones and devices in relation to CSE or child sexual abuse images can be extremely distressing to staff.

"It can be that the team could review up to hundreds of thousands of images on a case-to-case basis to find evidence of child sexual abuse images or of the sexual exploitation of children. The AI automation can help identify images much quicker, enabling faster safeguarding for the victims, but also reducing the time for digital investigators to have to review traumatic child abuse images.

"This automation process has such a positive impact on the mental health of staff and will completely transform digital forensics in these kind of cases.

"By building on this proof of concept, we can now be leaders in national best practice and are in the process of securing a significant uplift in technology to process jobs a lot faster which will in turn bring down backlogs faced in this high demand area of policing."